Duff McKagan teams up with Mike Mcready, Barrett Martin

What do you get when you mix Guns N’ Roses with Pearl Jam and add a dash of Screaming Trees? A new supergroup called the Levee Walkers.

Ex-GNR bassist Duff McKagan has joined forces with Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready and drummer Barrett Martin of the Trees to form the new band. The Levee Walkers just released their first two songs, “Freedom Song” and “Tears for the West.” Although Killing Joke singer Jaz Coleman pilots the vocals on the new tracks, he’s just the first in a rotating lineup of vocalists who will be working with the band.

In a post on the band’s website, Martin describes a levee walker as “a phantom that is occasionally seen walking across the tops of levees in the middle of the night.”

He goes on to say the members of the band have “battled their own phantoms” over the years, “burying a few friends along the way, until they emerged with clear hearts and minds, a seasoned understanding of music and the nature of life and death, and perhaps most importantly, the art of writing a great song, the most sacred tenant in their codex.”

In Martin’s word’s, the new Seattle-based band’s sounded is grounded in “the foundational music of blues, rock, and punk, reinterpreted through the filter of the Pacific Northwest.”

The three musicians previously collaborated together in the dark blues quartet Mad Season and the dirty blues group Walking Papers. They first met Jaz Coleman in 2012 at the Classic Rock Awards in London.

“Freedom Song” and “Tears for the West” can be purchased through the group’s website.